For the Oak Ridge girls of Girls Incorporated, their visitors from the African nation of Senegal are worlds apart.

Robert Holder

For the Oak Ridge girls of Girls Incorporated, their visitors from the African nation of Senegal are worlds apart.

But on Thursday, the game of basketball brought them together for a few hours as they learned from each other about their culture in a program called Sport 4 Peace.

With a grant from the U.S. State Department, part of the Empowering Women and Girls through Sports initiative, the University of Tennessee’s Center For Sport, Peace, and Society hosted the basketball delegation from Senegal in hopes of helping both the Senegalese players and American players understand the two countries cultures through sport.

Dr. Sarah Hillyer the founder of Sport 4 Peace in 1993 want to empower, equip, expose and entrust women with new cultures, ideas, networks and inspiration they can use in their local communities.

“We came here to discover other cultures,” said Fati Matou Fall, one of the Senegal players, through her interpreter. “The people here have been very welcoming and made themselves available to us.

“We have experienced many things since we have been here but the experience that touched me the most was wheelchair basketball.”

The girls got to meet the UT Lady Vols, as well as other UT faculty, but took time Thursday to play at Willowbrook Elementary with the girls of Girls Inc. and talk to them about Senegal. In turn, the young girls of Girls Inc. got to share about their program.

It is the second time Sports 4 Peace has come to Girls Inc. A volleyball team from the Middle East visited the program over the summer.